Photographing the Lodz Ghetto

Henryk Ross risked his life to document Nazi atrocities in the Lodz Ghetto.

“There was an order: ‘All the Jews to the ghetto’!”

The court listened, riveted, to the heart-rending testimony of a man seated in an Israeli courtroom, speaking in his native Polish, describing the death and destruction of millions of his fellow Jews just a few years earlier - and also describing his own heroic acts of resistance. For many people around the world, it was the only time they’d heard first-person accounts of what happened during the Holocaust.

The year was 1961, and the State of Israel was conducting the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the “Final Solution” that lead to the death of six million Jews as well as hundreds of thousands of other people. One 41-year-old Israeli, Henryk Ross, provided key testimony to Eichmann’s crimes. Thousands of pictures he secretly photographed during the Holocaust, at great risk to his own life, showed the world the depths of the depravity and brutality of the Nazi regime. Twenty years after he documented the cruelties of the Lodz Ghetto in Poland, Ross’s words and photos gave the world additional proof of the Nazis’ crimes.

Lodz is a bustling city about 75 miles southwest of Warsaw. In 1940, Lodz had the second largest Jewish community in Poland, numbering about 160,000 people.

Germany occupied Lodz on September 8, 1939. Immediately, Jews were targeted for persecution: Jewish holidays were banned, property owned by Jews was taken, Jews were banned from doing business, and all Jews were forced to wear Jewish stars on their clothes. Many Jews were taken away to work in forced labor camps.

In early February 1940, the Nazis designated 4.13 square kilometers (that number was later reduced to an even smaller area) in the northeastern section of Lodz as a Jewish ghetto, and forced 160,000 Jews - a third of the city’s population - to live in the area’s cramped space. Walls and fences were erected and guards patrolled the perimeter making sure nobody escaped.

Henryk Ross, then a 21-year-old photographer working as a sports photographer for a Warsaw newspaper before the war, was one of the Jews forced into the ghetto. The Nazis took away his camera, but soon returned it, bestowing an official job: Henryk, along with two other Jews in the ghetto, was to be an official ghetto photographer, taking pictures of workers for their factory IDs as well as propaganda pictures for the Department of Statistics in the Lodz Ghetto, falsely showing that life was pleasant and tolerable inside the ghetto’s walls.

Henryk realized that his camera and photography development studio gave him a unique gift: while carrying out his official duties, he could also document the horrors and misery all around him. It was dangerous work; Henryk knew he would face certain death if his unauthorized photographs were ever discovered. Nonetheless he risked his life over and over again to take thousands and thousands of clandestine photos of life in the ghetto.

“I did it knowing that if I were caught my family would be tortured and killed,” Henryk wrote in 1987, but he knew he needed to leave behind proof of what was happening to the Jewish people. “Some record of our tragedy, namely the total elimination of the Jews from Lodz by the Nazi executioners. I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry,” Henryk recalled.

When taking pictures for work IDs, Henryk would group many workers into one shot, thus saving film for his secret photos. The rest of the time, he would hide his camera under his coat and roam the ghetto, taking photos of the Jews going about their daily lives. Henryk cut holes in his pockets so that he could manipulate his hidden camera more easily. He shot pictures of children playing and tender family scenes. He also documented the back-breaking labor of Jews toiling in impossible conditions: barefoot, emaciated, and exhausted from overwork.

Tens of thousands of Jews from across Europe were sent to live in Lodz, swelling the already overcrowded area still further. A neighboring area housed thousands of Roma prisoners transported to Poland from Austria. The Lodz Ghetto was the second largest ghetto in Nazi Europe after Warsaw.

Lodz was meant to be a model ghetto, where Jews could escape death by proving their worth as workers. The ghetto housed shoe workshops, textiles factories, and centers where Jews were forced to make mattresses and German military uniforms. Tragically, some of the Jewish prisoners believed that working for the Nazis would keep them alive. The Chairman of the Jewish Council in the Lodz Ghetto, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, believed Nazi promises that being productive would save Jewish lives, and he helped run the ghetto in order to make it as productive as he could, hoping to appease his Nazi oppressors.

Jews in the ghetto performed backbreaking labor in harsh conditions, with very little food. Many had no running water nor access to toilets and sanitary conditions. Typhus ran rampant through the ghetto, and many died from malnutrition and overwork. About 20% of the Jews in the Lodz Ghetto perished from starvation, exhaustion and disease. “People either swelled up from hunger or became emaciated,” Henryk later testified. “There were cases of people collapsing in the street; there were cases where they collapsed at work and at home because of the difficult conditions. We were six to eight persons to one room, depending on the size of the room. People froze in the cold. There was no heating…I saw entire families, skeletons of people, who during the night were dying with their children.”

Those who didn’t die from neglect and overwork were sent away to be murdered, either in Auschwitz or in a nearby death factory built to kill the Jews of Lodz. In 1941, the Nazis built a killing facility at the town of Chelmno, about 30 miles northwest of Lodz. Starting in 1942, Jews and Roma were sent there to be murdered. Victims were sealed into airtight room in the back of trucks called “gas vans” and murdered as poisonous gas was pumped into the rooms. By September 1942, over 70,000 Jews and about 5,000 Roma had been murdered at Chelmno. Their bodies were buried or burned.

“In the year 1940, it was still not known” what fate awaited Jews, Henryk Ross explained later; “but by 1941, at the time of the further deportations, the Jews began to make inquiries and it became known to them that they were going into the ‘frying pan’...This was a routine expression of the people in the ghetto. They knew they were going to be burned…”

In September 1942, the Nazis issued a chilling order to the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto: almost all children under ten years old would be deported, sent to be murdered in Chelmno. Defying orders to stay indoors that cataclysmic day, Henryk went out to document this mass murder. His haunting photos of children waiting behind a chain-link fence to be deported gave the world the last glimpse of the lives of these beautiful young Jewish children.

Henryk also took the only photos of Jews being loaded onto railway cars at the Lodz railway station to be sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. These are important documents of the Nazi’s horrific crimes. At the Eichmann trial, Henryk recalled how he was able to document this scene:

“On one occasion, when people with whom I was acquainted worked at the railway station of Radegast (Lodz’s railway station), which was outside the ghetto but linked to it, and where trains destined for Auschwitz were standing - on one occasion I managed to get into the railway station in the guise of a cleaner. My friends shut me into a cement storeroom. I was there from six in the morning until seven in the evening, until the Germans went away and the transport departed. I watched as the transport left. I heard shouts. I saw the beatings. I saw how they were shooting at them, how they were murdering them, those who refused. Through a hole in a board of the wall of the storeroom I took several pictures.”

On another occasion, Henryk took photos of Germans seizing Jewish children from a hospital. “The Germans concluded that too few people were riding in the vehicles (taking Jews to be deported). They said they had to load more. The trucks came to the front of the hospital where the children were assembled. ...The children scratched the walls with their fingernails (as they were taken). The children did not cry any more, they knew what awaited them, they had heard about it. They could not cry. The Germans were running around in these rooms, they beat them and threw them from the windows and the balconies into these trucks. I was not there for a long time, for it was dangerous even for me to be there.”

Henryk didn’t take his photos alone. Soon after moving into the ghetto, he met Stefania Schoenberg; they married in the ghetto in 1941, and Stefania often worked as Henryk’s lookout, risking her life too so he could take his pictures.

On June 10, 1944, the order came: the Lodz Ghetto was to be liquidated and all remaining Jews sent to their deaths. At that point, the Jews of the Lodz Ghetto were the largest surviving Jewish community in Poland, but they soon would be reduced to ash like millions of other Jews. Between June 23 and July 17, 1944, over 7,000 Jews were sent from Lodz to Chelmo to be gassed. In August 1944 about 70,000 more Jews were sent to Auschwitz to be murdered.

By then, Henryk had amassed about 6,000 photographs. He buried them, assuming that he too would be killed. “I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom,” he later explained.

Instead of being deported, Henryk and Stefania were ordered to stay in the ghetto as part of the cleanup crew, erasing all traces of the Nazis’ crimes. They were scheduled to be murdered after they’d completed this gruesome work, but instead they and a handful of other Jews were liberated by the Soviets in January 1945. At the time, Henryk weighed just 85 pounds.

After the war, Henryk and Stefania dug up their precious photos and negatives. Water damage had destroyed about half of the negatives, but approximately 3,000 remained. The Ross's moved to Israel and began making prints. Their images provided crucial proof of many of the Nazis' horrific crimes and brutality at the Eichmann trial, showing the world for the first time what had gone on during the destruction of European Jewry.

Henryk Ross passed away in 1991. Before his death, he developed thousands of photographs from the Lodz Ghetto. Giving testimony at Eichmann’s trial, Henryk recalled, “I was shaking uncontrollably, everything came back to life.”

Thanks to Henryk’s and Stefania’s valiant work during their darkest years, the cruelty and crimes of the Nazi regime have come to life for all of us, allowing us a glimpse into both life and death in the Lodz Ghetto. The haunting images they produced of Lodz’s Jews are their enduring legacy.

Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world.

if the same thing happened to Jews in Israel. So concerned about "the Arabs" and everyone else in the world (especially themselves).... but Israel could burn and they would care less.

(22)
Anonymous,
August 25, 2019 8:42 PM

Picture Caption

While some of the pictures printed speak for themselvesit would have been helpful if .captions were provided

(21)
Bobby5000,
August 25, 2019 5:26 PM

Why didn't people fight

The Nazi regime continued because there was a steady stream of positive reinforcement from 1934-41, better economy, retaking of land, cancellation of bad agreements, shifting of income from Jews supposedly responsible for Germany's problems to other citizens, and a sense of pride and accomplishment contrasting with the defeat of WWI and economic depression of the 30's. Imagine if that success had been challenged. Imagine if instead of turning over goods, houses, wearing the Jewish star, and reporting for their destruction, Jewish residents set fires in Berlin, others carried machine guns and attacked infrastructure targets and provided resistance. I have a special forces family member and one person can make a large difference, if motivated.

The lessons of the holocaust were not lost on the new state of Israel and with it came the saying Never again, never again would Jews meekly go to their demise and instead.

1. Jews will learn how to fight, and for other Jews. There be no Jewish councils to help other countries, and because each Jew would be willing to risk his life, casualties have been limited.

2. Get accurate information. Words behind doors are more important than pleasantries said face to face. One of the first tasks of the new state was to get an accurate intelligent network.

3. Consequences One could murder 10,000 Jews without a single Nazi casualty. Resistance was minimal, a Jewish leader would be told to have people report by someone like Eichmann, they would, be checked for weapons, moved to an area and then face machines guns from 50 Nazis. Today those who terrorize and murder Israelis face consequences though the world periodically condemns such retaliation.

(20)
E Wilson, Leeds UK.,
August 25, 2019 4:49 PM

(Q) Why Did Christians Do This To Jews?

The best answer I can think off is 'Robbery,' to rob them, to profit from their deaths, labour, homes land, property, possessions and money. Proof of this is everywhere, if you add the words "Political Expediency," (a vote catching appeal) which takes into account that at anyone time 40% of the world population is anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner, then it makes sense to claim in this case that the Nazi Party shares your views and will seek to observe them. You do not have to be Jewish to take part in an Holocaust incident that might threaten your life and safety. All races have suffered, and we must not overlook that Slavery in America was an Holocaust incident, so was the American Red Indian Land Confiscation, and, one could argue that General George Armstrong Custer, Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao and Pol Pot were similar, stretching this argument further I could add Ted Bundy and any Mass Shooter, and others of that ilk.

(19)
Pam Buckroyd,
August 25, 2019 4:45 PM

Thank you for this astonishing testimony of fighting evil with photography.

Everyone can do something. Everyone. This man and woman used photography.

(18)
Stephen Finstein,
August 23, 2019 6:15 PM

What happened to Stefania?

What happened to Stefania?

(17)
Ralph David Ortegon,
August 23, 2019 5:22 PM

I was so moved, to a sense of a True Belief and disgust, in what I read and the pictures I saw of the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. What a horrific time, which saddens me. I ask myself, "How can humankind hate!" And, just 22 years later, from June 1944 I was 17 years old; and I entered the military on June 10, 1966. I volunteered to defend America against communism and other such human atrocities. God Bless All The Souls of Lodz, Poland. Rabbi, I would of taken a great interest in learning this in high school, but it was neither discussed, not taught in Catholic school, I ask myself why? God Bless, Ralph O.

(16)
Nalinaksha Mutsuddi,
August 23, 2019 2:28 PM

Unimaginable

It becomes very difficult for me to understand why the Christians were so cruel to the Jews everywhere.

(15)
DAVID,
August 23, 2019 1:22 PM

I still can't get it...

No matter how many times I read or hear about these tragedies-- even from those who witnessed them, I can still never find an answer in my own mind to the question "how could anyone do such a thing?"

The fact that, very clearly, so many people could (and did) do such a thing is almost to frightening to contemplate.

Anonymous,
August 26, 2019 9:03 PM

Only people full of hate are capable of destroying others. Those who are full of love, kindness and respect for others can not comprehend hate. I am so glad you are full of love, David. The world needs more people just like YOU!

(14)
denise crammer,
August 23, 2019 12:46 PM

Thanks to G-d for this evidence

If not for this heroic photographer and his brave wife, there would not be as much evidence of the Nazi’s atrocities towards innocents. Their ethnic cleansing programme is too horrific for words. So much has already been said and written but one can only say why and where was humanity in those abhorrent times.

(13)
Chaiah Schwab,
August 23, 2019 7:23 AM

My grandfather on my mother's side was from Lodz.

He escaped from Poland before the war or I would not be alive today.

(12)
Anonymous,
August 23, 2019 4:57 AM

I JUST SAW THIS MOVIE!

Today I saw this story in movie form by the name of "The Photographer of Mauthausen" - it says it was based on true events. The photographer was Spanish, however. All the details seem similar. Anybody know if it is the same story?

(11)
GLENDA,
August 22, 2019 9:58 PM

EVERY AMERICAN SCHOOL CHILD SHOULD SEE THESE PHOTOS

THIS INFO SHOULD BE A REQUIRED COURSE FOR ALL AMERICAN CHILDREN BECAUSE WE HAVE PEOPLE IN THE U S CONGRESS THAT ARE HOSTILE TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE. THESE PHOTOS SHOULD STRIKE FEAR IN US THAT THERE ARE AMERICANS THAT SEE NOTHING WRONG WITH WHAT NAZIS DID!!

(10)
Larry Gaum,
August 22, 2019 9:28 PM

A picture of Henryk Ross

Show us a picture of Henryk.

(9)
Anonymous,
August 22, 2019 8:41 PM

My in-laws (may they rest in peace) were in eastern Europe when WW II broke out. My father-in law originally from Poland, fled the Nazis, to Russia.My mother-in-law was not so lucky... She was 16 when the war ended, havingbeen through the Nazi inferno, in a concentration camp. The Nazi curse uponthe Jewish Nation, is experienced to this day through the offspring of Holocaust survivors (meaning my husband.....)The hellish gehinom which the Germans put our brethren throughwas not exclusive to the historical period of WW 11, but continues for all the generations to come, to the end of time.........

(8)
Andy Gabor (alt),
August 22, 2019 6:28 PM

great write up

If possible I would like to connect with Mrs Alt Miller My Grandfather on my mother side was an Alt family member. He died in a concentration camp and was taken from Budapest.I am not looking for anything other that a possible family member.IF Mrs Alt thinks we could be related please contact me at the above email Thank you for your attentionAndy Gabor

(7)
Mel Korn,
August 22, 2019 5:27 PM

That is my father.

In the first picture at the top of this article, the man on the left is my late father Joseph Korn Z”L. The exhibit was first shown here in Toronto, at the Art Gallery of Ontario which owns the collection. There are no words to convey the emotion when I stood in front of this photograph for the first time in July 2015.

(6)
Laura,
August 22, 2019 5:08 PM

This is your best article yet, Dr. Miller. Thank you for sharing it with us!

(5)
E Wilson Leeds UK,
August 22, 2019 4:15 PM

The City of Lodz was a famous tailoring centre in Poland.

This well written article contains 1868 words, most are so familiar to me that they fail to register, what does kick me (and no doubt many others) in the stomach is the photo of the small boy stood in the horse drawn cart being taken to who knows where, and possibly to his death. Little boy whoever you are, I wish you were here right now with me, sharing my food, and tea and life. And my wife who’s a big softie could give you a warm cuddle, could get your clothes ready for school tomorrow and for both of us to adopt you. Your memory belongs to us, to the world and in some respects to the State of Israel. Today in Israel some young person like you - be it a man or woman, is honouring your memory by taking up arms against any foe. Little Boy you created the State of Israel, and the injustice done to you will never be forgotten. I hope you lived, that you survived, but I am realistic enough to know that is wishful thinking on my part. But not on the part of that young Israeli I mentioned earlier. Respects my son, my deepest respects.

Laura,
August 22, 2019 5:07 PM

I too want to reach into the photographs and bring all of the people to safety. I am crying now, knowing that a large number of those pictured perished.

Need to go pray now.

(4)
David A Goldstein, PhD,
August 22, 2019 4:05 PM

This is an extremely well written article.

This article is written extremely well. The author clearly has an ability to provide a great deal of material in a concise manner. She provided her own photography with words.

(3)
Stephen lefrak,
August 22, 2019 3:38 PM

No longer European Yiddishkeit

The National Socialist program to eradicate Jews and our culture was successful and what they didn’t fully accomplish , Stalin and his international Socialists finished. Israel for its own reason certainly did not encourage a rebirth of Yiddishket in Etetz Yisrael either. Those are the brutal facts.

Dvirah,
August 23, 2019 7:32 AM

One branch down, the tree lives on

Yahadut, however, is alive and well.

(2)
roslyn blumberg,
August 22, 2019 2:45 PM

excellent

let the world know

(1)
Zvi Berkovits,
August 22, 2019 2:26 PM

Very informative and interesting thanks for the information and sharing